Staking the Loved One
by Carf
Summary: Named after a tv trope. A bit of introspective from Peyton's POV at the end of "Dead Rat, Live Rat, Brown Rat, White Rat". One shot. What do you do when you find out your best friend is a zombie and it actually makes sense?


_Like one who, on a lonely road,_

 _Doth walk in fear and dread,_

 _And, having once turned round, walks on,_

 _And no more turns his head;_

 _Because he knows a frightful fiend_

 _Doth close behind him tread._

-Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner"-

If we look at the monsters of our popular fiction you find that what scares us most is not death but becoming something unrecognizable, in effect losing ourselves until we are no longer anything like what we once were. A scratch, a bite with the ability to do more than kill, the ability to make us into what we hate most. So often these narratives force the protagonist to turn against the people they once loved when they are transformed into the monsters. For the most part this seems like a metaphor for letting our loved ones go, a fiction that rationalizes pulling the plug and defines the difference between the body and the soul. The narrative wants us to know that they have to die (or die again as the case may be) and shapes itself around explaining why. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer vampires are explained as just human bodies possessed by demons while the Walking Dead frames zombies as just corpses reanimated by a virus or a parasite, simply put though the look like someone you once knew that person is already dead and killing their dead body is the right thing to do in order to preserve their memory. Of course this isn't true with werewolves, those stories might just contain the most moral ambiguity of all as the werewolf is still alive and for 29 days out of the month they are just the same as they have always been. And yet from the Wolf Man to Werewolf in London they always end the same, with their death and this is okay because they're in torment and well, they did kill people so justice is technically served. The moral is that sometimes you have to let go and sometimes you have to drive the stake in yourself.

But what if it wasn't a story anymore? What if it was your real life? What if that person who was no longer human, that you were supposed to be letting go off, that was supposed to already be dead, looked you in the eye and said that she was still the same? What if you found out your best friend was a zombie and it somehow made sense? Peyton was known for being calm under pressure, it was what made her so good in the courtroom. Pre-law she'd studied politics and history while Liv had dissected practically every animal under the sun, learning how past generations had navigated intrigue and gone to war with courage and fortitude . Hell, she'd even read the Art of War which was all about logical thought and learning all the facts before taking action. But now? Now she was overwhelmed with blind terror, the kind you feel when every carefully constructed piece of your carefully constructed life comes crashing down. When you realize that the world is full of secrets beyond your wildest imaginings and they come with glowing red eyes. When you find out you've been living with a monster.

"There are zombies in this world, Peyton, and I'm one of them." It should have been funny. Even better, it should have been stupid but instead Peyton found herself believing it. Not just because of what she'd just seen though that certainly helped. The timelines matched up, the story was corroborated by physical evidence and she knew Liv, or at least she had once upon a time. Liv changed after the boat party not just in how she looked or dressed or even acted but somehow in a place much deeper than you could see and Peyton hadn't known her anymore. Because she wasn't traumatised, she was dead.

Peyton knew she had a responsibility now. It was time to follow in the footsteps of the 1990 remake of The Night of the Living Dead and 28 Days Later. Every horror movie she'd ever seen was telling her that now was the time to think about the greater good and put Liv out of her misery. But that wasn't going to happen. What held Peyton back as these thoughts raced through her brain, crashing into each other in their urgency, was not merely fear of a monster it was the absolute terror of losing her best friend forever. While her head knew her fear had already come to pass her heart refused to believe and it would not be swayed. Besides she wasn't Van Helsing or Ash, maybe monster slaying was never in her DNA, at least not when they looked so human. Maybe she was just a coward, but something deep inside was grateful, oh so grateful to be one. So she ran. Peyton Charles ran from her own home like Frankenstein first faced with the monster he created.

 **Author's note: Considering the one episode where Ravi comes over and Peyton, Liv, and Major have an established movie night where they watch Vertigo and then offer to watch a zombie movie I made the assumption that Peyton is probably a major horror movie fan so this has a lot of references to classic horror flicks though for Frankenstein and Dracula (Van Helsing) I'm drawing more from the books than any movies made from those properties. I also got the epithet from Frankenstein if anyone's curious. Oh and Ash is the Ash from the Evil Dead movies not from Pokemon.**


End file.
